Hurrah!! for Harbor Freight

Own two drillmaster 18 volt drills with three batteries and two chargers. Anyway, two of the batteries will no longer take a charge or even light up the pilot light on the charger. I know these are cheap units, but, at $9 per battery ($29 for my Makita 9 volt) they deliver great value and much better torque.
Anyway, to my surprise, the batteries can actually be dis-assembled as opposed to cut apart with a hacksaw!! Great going HF!!! I have re-celled well over a hundred battery packs (surveying equipment, mainly) and this is the first time I didn't have to hacksaw one apart and re-assemble with tape!!
Opened up the batteries (4 Phillips screws) and observed all the corrosion. My wife reminded me of all the times I had left them in the rain. (Northwest, surprise rains all the time). Replaced the rusted out broken link, and good to go. I suppose I should have made a couple of drain holes in the battery case to obviate future corrosion should they ever be left out.
That was my Saturday morning, Ivan Vegvary

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My in-law knows a lot more than most about electical things. He buys old devices with bad ni-cads, then charges up a huge capacitor with something about twice the battery's voltage and zaps it. he says half of them come back as it toasts the sulfate short-circuits. I have also seen a few cordless drills with cords attached so you clip them to your Jeep's battery on the trail. Its not trash until you can't figure out how to use it anymore.

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You are so right. Wife wanted me to go buy a new DeWalt drill. There is such a great satisfaction knowing that you tweaked a little more life out of something broken. Or used a piece of scrap instead of buying new materials.
Ivan Vegvary

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I use a DC mig welder, set at around 25 volts, to zap my 12V cordless batts for about three seconds. Works OK.
Dan

Hey an,
Explain a bit more please. Be specific for a dummy like me. Is that just to charge them, or "shock" the ones that don't want to re-charge, or what????
Brian Lawson, Bothwell, Ontario. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX On Sun, 24 Aug 2008 12:42:40 -0700 (PDT), Dan_Thomas snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:
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I would think that some care should be excersized here. While working for the Navy on a project involved with surface waves created by depositing aluminum on a small quartz chip we had a matrix that looked like two hair combs facing each other with the comb teeth intermeshing but not touching. We would often get shorts in the aluminum between the teeth. Not wanting to just throw the little quartz chip away, I got a microscope and a power supply and put the leads on each side of the shorted teeth. I carefully turned up the voltage, watching the shorts thru the microscope and Voila!! I watched the shorts disappear. Proud of myself I called my boss to show him the cost saving technique that I had discovered. This time, with my boss looking thru the microscope, confident that I had found a cool trick, I turned up the voltage a bit faster and BANG. The quartz exploded and buried pieces in the ceiling. My boss wasn't too impressed although he missed the pieces by having his face in the microscope. The technique worked but more care was needed in the process.

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Old nicads grow whiskers inside that short out the various layers. The cell is then shorted and won't take a charge. By burning out the whiskers, you can then get some extra life out of the cell. I've done this, success rate was about 50%, second time around sucess rate was nil. Note that you don't do this on the WHOLE pack, just the one shorted cell. There've have been various circuits to do this over the years, usually a capacitor is charged up to 25-100 volts, then discharged through the cell. Charge the pack and check the voltage across the cell. Repeat until fixed or until you are bored. This does NOTHING for good cells and will damage them. Also, if the cell has been shorted any length of time, there are probably one or more reverse charged cells in the pack, which tends to overheat them and they then vent electrolyte, the souce of the white grunge you see inside a dead pack. Some cell designs have a valve which closes after the pressure vents, some have a puncture diaphragm, once it goes, the cell dries out. No way of knowing ahead of time which type you've got. Best bet is to re-cell the whole pack.
Stan

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It's to burn the shorts out. It won't charge them much. I use a pair of wires about twelve feet long, and set the thing outside around the corner while I connect it to the welder inside and zap it so that if it blows it won't kill me. Then I leave it alone out there for awhile in case it gets ideas after I disconnect the welder. It'll get warm doing this and might explode after a bit. I've zapped cordless phone battery packs (3.6v) using a 24-volt battery charger. Open circuit is around 30 volts. I stick the battery pack under a bucket and stand on that, again to prevent damage from expoding batteries.
Dan

Brian,
How could he possibly explain ???
Bob Swinney
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Nicads that are old or used a lot can get a fairly high resistance internal short. Probably from metal not plating back exactly where it should. So when you try to recharge them, they do not accept the charge. But if you apply the right amount of voltage from a source that can deliver a lot of current, you may be able to burn the short off. After that you charge them as normal.
Dan

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I used to do that when my 14.4v NiCads were bad, but they are junk now so I use 24 vdc (2 car batteries in series) at high current for about 20 seconds. It zaps them enough they will charge normally and hold a charge for 24 hrs. Within a few days they are back to less than a volt, but apparently I can re-zap them and recharge when I need to, it does take a couple of hours to recharge so I have to plan ahead.
Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/

Ivan Vegvary wrote:
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Hey - you want a brand new 18v Drillmaster battery? I got a HF 18v cordless drill, just for the drill motor. I never used the battery & you can have it for shipping. 2lbs from 01741. The charger also, if you want it - another pound.
Bob

<snipped bragging about buying stuff made in China>
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So you guys don't see anything wrong with putting your fellow workers out of a job, and then cheering about it.

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Are you referring to fellow workers as those that live in your neighborhood, live in your city, live in your state, live in your country, or live in your world?
And while you are thinking, are you a Native American? Or are you an import?
I see nothing wrong with buying things made on earth. But drawn the line on things made on Venus.
Dan

John Doe wrote:
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Do you shop at Wal-Mart?

John Doe wrote:
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Well, if the "fellow workers" would produce a product that was worth a shit at a reasonable cost perhaps we wouldn't have to buy stuff made in China. Ever think about THAT?
Jim

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You need to start understanding that the Chinese are your fellow workers as well and if they are willing to work for 50 cents an hour (which is typical of what they get paid) it means they need the money a hell of a lot more than the guy down the street from you is having trouble finding "good work" at $25 per hour.
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It's easy for any healthy average intelligence American to make 10 times what those guys in China are making. Be happy we live in a country where true good paying work and such a high standard of living is so easy to come by.
As things average out, China's standard of living will equalize with the rest of the developed world and jobs will stop drifting over there. The more Americans keep pretending we have some God given right to be lazy and rich (by world standards) the more we will see these 9-11 type events where the the rest of the world kicks our butts for being such ass holes.
I'm not against anyone who is willing to pay more to buy American goods to help support fellow American workers. I do it at times. But I think we actually do the world as a whole far more good, by buying from whoever is willing to to work the hardest for the least money to produce the best product. Supporting people for doing a good job, is never a bad thing, no matter where they live.
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On 05 Sep 2008 18:52:52 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, snipped-for-privacy@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) quickly quoth:
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That's not completely true, Curt. The wages in a country are usually indicative of its environment. The guy down the street has a mortgage, one or more cars, eleven types of insurances, 500 channels of TV, radios, CDs, MP3 players, etc. The guy in China was given his home (or he built it himself), has no insurance, no mortgage, no TV or electronics needing to be fed, etc. Cost of living is near nothing there, while it's high as hell here. 50 cents an hour could be top wages in his xian (county.)
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And we pay for all our amentities directly from the higher wages.
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Hmm, you seem to hate us a lot...are you a Democrat?
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Let's hope not. That'd be unamerican! <g>
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True, and now that the global workforce/economy/market genies are out of the bottle, there is no going back.
-- Who is wise? He that learns from every One. Who is powerful? He that governs his Passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody. -- Benjamin Franklin